Transcripts For CSPAN3 Alissa 20240705

Welcome alissa quart caught for a discussion of her new book going for broke, a collection of compelling, hard hitting first person essays, poems and photos that expose what our punitive social systems do to so Many Americans and demonstrates real ways to change our conditions. Well also have an audience q a at the very end of the evening, followed by a signing. If you have not yet already purchased or picked up your book, theyre available for purchase at the register and then once you get your copy there, you can find all of our panelists at this table here. Sue alistair will be joined in conversation by Molly Crabapple alex miller, celina su and astra taylor baylor. About the author. Editor facilitator this evening. Alissa quart is the author of bootstrapped liberating ourselves from the American Dream squeezed why our families cant afford america and branded the buying and selling of teenagers and two books of poetry. She is the executive director of the Economic Hardship reporting project and has written for many publications, including the washington post, the New York Times and time. Her honors include an emmy award and esp j award and nieman fellowship with that. Yall didnt come here for me. Im going to hand over the mic. Thanks, folks. Okay. On very. On hiring lady. Lovely to see you all. I love this panty knitwear which i think was named after the original business. Is that right, kay . Yeah. And yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember actually when it was being created and trying to come up with names for it. And then, of course, they did that thing that you name it after the original, the lost original, which is the lawrie side, is almost always clothing shop selling tomatoes. So its apropos that were doing it as a place that were strata that used to be sold because this is really a book about working and living on the edge economically. But you know, the despair, the beauty, the difficulty of that, the meaning of that, ill be moderating it. Were here to celebrate the publication, which just was published. So i decided to put this volume together with the help of laura rossi. Hello, laura. Because ive been working here at Economic Hardship reporting project, the nonprofit i run for ten years. It was founded by Barbara Ehrenreich, the late, great Barbara Ehrenreich. Lets give her hand. And part of what barbara thought when she created the ahp was that should only be the rich who write about poverty, you know, like the world of david brooks writing about deadbeat dads should be not questioned, but potentially overthrown. And we should instead have lots of people who live up and down the income income gradient and have, you know, worked with their hands and have lived being unhoused and then written about homelessness. Right. So its not just people who are privileged writing about these things and also the 2008 recession made a lot of journalism jobs, felt that they fell by the wayside, along with a lot of other a lot of other middle class work and lots of other other kinds of jobs per se. Something like 45 of staff jobs disappeared. So part of what we were doing with hp was continuing to have people who didnt come from inherited wealth writing and photographing and illustrating and making films. So we recruited, edited, raised money to fund hundreds independent reporters. And then we copublished with major places. So all of the stuff in this book or almost all of it has been copublished in New York Times, washington post, cosmo, the nation and esquire, the believer lit hub. You know, a lot of different places. And so in order to put this together, i also wanted to gather some some people to write intros. And that included astra taylor whos whos next to me, who is wrote the introduction to the section in the book called glass. Astra is a writer, filmmaker and political organizer. Her most recent book is the age of insecurity coming together as things fall apart. Another contributor today is Alex Miller Alex is a navy veteran. He experienced some trauma from. His military service. Hes a fellow at europe and has been published in the New York Times and esquire. Hes writing a middle grade memoir about his experiences of going to school for the first time at 11 years old. The third contributor is celina su. Im hoping she will read. Her poem in the introduction when she introduces herself, which is about experiences that she had reporting in chinatown, it was mostly in chinatown. Her poetry generally documents immigration and migration. Sue is the marilyn gutel chair in urban studies and professor of Political Science at cuny. She was born in sao paulo and her first book of poetry is called qalandia. And finally, we have the famed Molly Crabapple author and illustrator and also an ap fellow. Her contribution to our anthology is illustrated piece she did for us the taxi drivers successful organizing campaign. Whats like a year and a half ago or like that . So will you show that to us . Molly its in the book so you can its just like its so one of the things that is remarkable, i think about this book is, yeah, so its like five or six pages of images that she drew of taxi drivers who are organizing. But we also have poetry like poetry that celina wrote. So its not just journalism and essays, personal essays like the essay that alex wrote. So without further ado, i want to start our discussion. A lot of these pieces were discussing inequality, but theyre really about the burden put on people to get the services they need. And thats, i think, offered a universal experience for people who cant afford a concierge. You know, basically anybody who has to fill out Financial Aid form for their kids education knows what that burden is. So and also, i think another theme of the book is the way that people nongovernmental leave for justice within institutions when the local and federal government fails them. And so i wanted to start actually out with alex because so you on alex wrote moved a shelter when he can no longer afford housing. He struggled to get services from the Veterans Administration and maybe i dont know if you even want to read a little bit of your essay or do you. Is it not working. And . He im in i could if you want or you can just maybe describe what its about. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Hi, alex. Hi. So im a veteran and ive worked with i should say, not worked with, but been treated by the va for 15 years and through that experience, i learned how much they dont want to give and that there are a few people who really do care about your treatment. When i was going through the process, i met some vets who told me, listen, you dont just go in to the va and get what you want. No, you have to give them a reason to give you what . Unique. I thought that was unfair because youre supposed to be servicing veterans. Its in the title and so its like, you know, you got to go in, you got to look bad, you know, dont wash for seven days. Go in there talking like youre crazy. And all this. And i was like, i dont know about that, man, but eventually i got to the point where i was ready to jump out of a window. So when i started to cry out for real help, they started giving real help. And it shouldnt be like that. Thats what i wrote about in the piece and you know, so this was esquire. And but so and part of it was about what you felt like you had to do, sort of like the kind of the performance to get services right . Yeah. Like what was that . Well, i mean, you know, like i said, a lot of guys, they would try to get the services that they needed and they needed the services because, you know, either they had diabetes or they were on medications. Psych psycho medications and. They werent getting those services and the va wasnt helping them. Sometimes the va let you slip through the cracks and you end up homeless. I was homeless at the time and it just it just felt that they were not listening to my needs and they werent so a lot of guys would go in and they would just, you know, slit their wrists or, you know, anything to just cry out for help because they werent getting it. Yeah, but i mean, what i want to emphasize also, alex is writing about this stuff is very, very powerful. Like its one the as jay was at the sga award for first person writing first person essays and a bunch of other awards. So i really recommend that you guys, you know, read it as well. So, molly, you did this piece about taxi drivers for us. And obviously the challenge with them was, was how you thought at first this struggle was doomed like so many other nascent labor movements, like they were it was it was hard to get get them get the effect that they wanted. But it finally did succeed. But how did you win their trust . How did you get involved with them . Can you tell us about it . Hey, everyone, im thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much, aliza, for for having me at wonderful party. I became aware of the taxi workers fight for debt relief because at that time i lived in the financial district and for years they were picketing in front of city hall. Im not sure how many people in the audience remember some years ago, the New York Times did an expose on how taxi drivers were kind of conned by the city and by various by various Financial Institutions into taking on to pay debts that basically made them indentured servants for their elderly years. And right after the city conned them into taking on these loans to buy their medallions, the city allowed uber in, which made their medallions nearly worthless, which to a spate of suicides by drivers, one of which was done in front of city hall. So for years i was watching protests organized by the new York Taxi Workers Alliance and they were creative. They were disciplined, and they got no attention whatsoever for and so i got used to thinking of this struggle as something that was just going to be bulldozed the way that working class people always are by the hedge fund brats and finance demons of the city. But then one night on twitter, i saw zoran mamdani, our amazing dsa assemblyman, tweeted that there is a sit in and camped out in front of city hall of these taxi workers. And there were they had set up a protest camp and they were not going to leave until they got debt relief. And so i decided to join them. I rolled in around 1 a. M. There was five older guys sitting on chairs. A taxi workers are one of the most diverse groups of humans in the world. They speak 120 languages. They come from every country in the world. Youve got guys from ghana with guys from russia, with guys from afghanistan, all of them offending each other, and but also working together. And thats what i saw. I saw, you know, some older guys giving each other in front of city hall and i joined them and i kept coming back. And i mean, winning their trust, i guess. I dont know, just listen to people. And then also i, i started drawing pictures of the guys and, you know, a lot of people in this world, no one ever draws their picture. No one ever looks at them like that. No one ever like really sees them. And so when i drew pictures of these guys, it was something special. And i started giving them prints, which they would put on the windows of their taxes they would use as protest signs. And thats how i came into the story, just by hanging out with the guys, listening to them joke and drawing their picture. Yeah, thats very cool. And molly done a lot of projects for us, actually. Shes about the renters revolt. That was the cover of the nation. And so one of the things about this book and in general is we always try to find more imaginative ways to write about income inequality and to illustrate it literally. And that includes poetry. So that brings me to selina. So you write about migration in your poetry, and then as an academic, you write about how ordinary citizens engage in local politics like public budget processes, right . I dont know. I think maybe you could read a little bit of your poem to give the listeners a taste. Viewers a taste, because this is called documentary poetry, its a salena reported this poem like she she interviewed people for it. Its not just didnt fully emerged from her or her mind so maybe you could read a little bit. Salena okay, so im going to read from the poem called p. S. 5042, and its based on an oral history with someone named mae wong lee, who attended p. S. 42 and is now the principal. So all of the details are from her. And ill say that the assignment made me a little bit anxious because im used to my Academic Research being Peer Reviewed or my op ed being edited, but my poems, im not used to them being that that would be mandated, that they be fact checked with the original folks because so much of it is also my interpret notation or uses of metaphor. But it was such a lovely process. And another way of trying to be publicly accountable. And i just wanted to say i really appreciated that. I loved it. So great. Okay. Piece 42. Thats what i remember now that you couldnt escape that she was really cool with bellbottoms and long hair. She was trained in open classrooms, these bright fluorescent lights. A link to the outside world. She gave us extra math, tutoring during what would have been a lunch break. They didnt have the missionary syndrome coming down here to save those poor chinese people, a white savior, complex that you make your own choices, as with guinea pigs, frogs baby chicks, the school bell rings. We played craft soccer because there wasnt enough room for regular soccer. We would line up against opposite walls ready on all fours. Roll call. One, four, five. That they emphasized good sportsmanship. Not to tease that we would crawl out on our backs backwards like crabs. That during Parent Teacher conferences my mother brought one soup for all the teachers because she knew it was a long night that when i didnt get a reader, she the reader a piece of her mind just because my daughters last name is wong doesnt mean you dont give my child reader that you ran out no such thing. An emphatic nod. She was a real tough cookie. Roll call the cornish man, the pickle man across the street. Mr. Paskowitz. Mr. Carroll de silvestro. Is wrong to jelly. Ms. Crean. Ms. Wang. President , the. Thats why i came back. I want to be here. Thank you, selina. Who. Yeah. Its lenas one of, like six or seven poet poets. Maybe more in the collection. And they include somebody who experienced homelessness, who was writing about that during the pandemic. And its its pretty great, these poems and Fact Checking is part of the poetry process. Happy to talk about that more. Finally, my dear friend, astros here and each of sections of the book. So the book is divided five sections, i think, and i wanted them to be in your face sections, like not just your nonprofit, you know. Oh, heres another, you know, issue around income inequality. Heres another section that you can kind of exhaustively plod through. But is called the body and. The other is called class and. I thought astro would really write about us essay about class. So i assigned that to her and. Im i also wanted to make clear that and i think she feels this way too that the people in this collection arent just dealing with a shortage of opportunity. Theyre dealing a whole massive obstacles and that that you dont want to just go negative and have a tire collection of people dealing with obstacles that they never overcome. But you also dont want to just lean into this kind of neoliberal idea that anyone who wants to can actually, you know, live the American Dream. So anyway, lets so tell tell us about what youre thinking about class. It felt like a big assignment. What is class . But only a thousand words. Now i just want to say thank you. I mean, such a huge fan of each sharp and everything youre doing. And i think it is so important to write about from this. You know, radical perspective and to empower who are actually living it from different dimensions to not just have the opportunity to research and write, but then to get them into publications that are typically closed to folks who dont come from certain backgrounds. So i just want to say thank you and, you know, just underscore how important that is and to have this perspective where, you know, to write about class poverty and inequality doesnt mean you just have to tell these one dimensional, sad stories, right . That you can use poetry. You know, visual arts. Ive made some documentaries for you as well but that actually, you know, this is where people are multidimensional. Lets show them and all those dimensions. So class. Yeah. You know, class is not just that some people are poor and unfortunate and some people are rich. Class is about what your position is in larger systems of finance and production. And there are some people who are capitalists who are occupy a certain class position that benefits from the impact in immiseration and exploitation of others. And thats something that we dont talk enough in this society, but were talking about it a whole more than we used to. And, you know, thing thats so great about hrp is youre keeping that space open, right . And saying, no, this is something we have to keep discussing. So in that very brief introduction to the section on class, you know, i talk about how growing up in the nineties and even the early twenties, you know, everyone was middle class, there was just this sort of sense, you know, everyones middle class or aspiring to be middle class and it was really, you know, for me, the occupy wall Street Movement that was also a part of it was where people started talking about class again. So 2011, talking about the 99 and the 1 and sort of breaking that that myth that everybodys middle class. And so class. Yeah, class is a structural a structural thing. But as the you know great essays in this show, you know, people are, you know, some of the essays that. One of them talks a lot about how people a certain class, people of lower class are shamed for the choices they make in a way that very different from someone whos upper class, you know, just show how difficult it actually is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, to have that, you know, upward mobility that were supposed to be striving for. And the other thing i mentioned just fleetingly is the fact that, you know, today now that classes back on the agenda class has become kitsch, right . So we have right wingers talking about the working class as though they actually give a about folks. What also blasting labor unions and saying, you know, in, you know, telling working people that the source of all their woes are, you know, woke people and in College Professors and immigrants, instead of the capitalist class that actually explaining them. So, you know, i crammed as much in there as i could in that short bit, but really i just want to recommend that people read the book because its great. Thank you. Astra. Yeah, so astra has a fellow at the hrp and yeah, a lot of her work you can it on the website on the Economic Hardship talk web website as well as in the collection. And i love you just said about it being like kitsch because i think its also like theres a marketing value politically to talking about class and just for lip service to it and not to actually obviously. And thats i dont know if anyone what, but forced themselves to watch republican debates but there was a startling amount of conversation about social class and some of them and youre like, this is so bizarre. Anyway, thats something we could all talk about later on. So alex, go back to you. I mean, one of the things thats interesting about alexs writing is and i, alex and i have done a whole bunch of events together, so that he defines himself very even though hes had economic setbacks in the past. And youve been a vet, but you also see yourself as a gamer and a malen yo and you have all these different and thats part of the thing thats important to me about each happy and the essays is that these are a just stories of of woe, you know theyre stories of people building a life. Theres a essay in this collection about the beauty of discount shopping another one about how to like, you know, cooking a soup for kind of recipe when you dont have when youre when your budgets tight and, you know, like it could sound like light, but i think thats really important that people have complex identities within economic so to anyway like why is it important to you that that youre all these other things and even youre doing a middle grade book and i think i think that all of us are Different Things things. We like to belong as as humans. We like to be part of a community where some of us are mothers, some of us are queer, trans, some of us are homeless, some of us are loners, and even though you think youre alone, youre not alone. There are other loners out there. Oh, its important for us to accept that thats who we are. You know, we become that thing and. You know, one of the i think one of the most popular things people think that they are is a writer or they want be a writer and they think that they can write. And thats just not how it works. Thats is so important about, you know, what we all do is is, as you know, writers, its a community, its a group that you belong to and you have support for that. I i know that you believe this, but im black. The reason i know why i come is because, you know, so they that it takes, you know, 40000 hours before you become a professional at something. Ive been a professional black man. My whole life, but it was always hard for me to accept that thats who i am, that im a part of that community because even when i was a kid, my mother told me, you know, you have an unlucky skin color. I was the dark one. The rest of my siblings were lighter skinned and i was shunned. And for years i hated my nose. And i hated the way that i talked and, you know, i hated everything about the community that i am from. It wasnt until gained acceptance of it that i loved to be part of this thing, that i shouldnt be afraid of or ashamed of being a black person or a black man, a dark skinned black man. I mean, im not the best looking dude out there not winning any awards, you know, for that. But. Ill do my best. But it is important that we do acknowledge that we are more than one thing. We are all part of a Community Like human humankind, but were all also different of communities. So thats why i think its so important to. Yeah, i love that. I mean, and this something that both mollys piece the taxi driver and astrids work debt you know people who are sort of defined as debtors right. Which is now at this point what is it like 30 of its Something Like 30 of were more right. More of of americans and i actually much more than now im like, what is the debt numbers now . Shoot. No, i people are in debt like yeah im so like having this kind of multifarious idea of selfhood i think is also really a big part of this. Income insecurity anyway. So selena, my favorite line in the poem was this that when i didnt get a reader she gave the teacher a piece of her mind just because my daughters last name is wong doesnt mean that you dont give my child a reader that you ran out no such thing. An emphatic nod. She was a real tough cookie. Do you mind talking about, like, how so you interviewed this woman. So. So can you explain i mean, with the documentary poetry process, like, how do you then take this oral history and make it into something with line breaks . Are you selecting are you how how are you looking at the quotes i ended up having different themes that sort of became different write poems, partly reflecting my own obsessions and preoccupations so mostly i study policy and, local political economy. And local politics. So i was also so definitely. For instance gentrification in chinatown was one of the lenses and trying to unearth all of the old maps and figure out and this wasnt in chinatown, but as another example, near where i live in prospect heights, brooklyn, i noticed that one building was slightly off the street grade. It was a little bit askew. And when i dug in or dug old maps, i saw that it was an old lin ap line from flatbush, canarsie to broadway to albany. So a so i was trying to do that sort of thing of at old phantom streets, looking at the histories that might be eviscerated or erased by might be hiding in plain sight front of us. So may wong lee, the person who talked about piece 42, for instance, she talked about working in all factories in on the second and third floors all over chinatown since she was eight years old and could barely see tipped to reach the pedals with her tiptoes. But it was during baby doll dress, trendy time, and with ai. So i feel like eighties early nineties and. And she got a penny for each fabric belt she. She turned inside out and you just and when the union inspectors came they all hid in the laundry and on the fire escapes. You cant make this stuff up. So. So there was something about trying to give tribute to those ways of knowing and. And, you know, in researching usually a pre assigned topic or theme like race and class treated as two separate various roles often. And its like you, you you cant separate those. Which brings me like some quotes like stuart saying that race is the medium through which classes, but its like, oh, here i see it in front of me in ways that i, i dont think i would have appreciated otherwise. Its just other way of knowing and to think about different experiences together and what is true, not through replicability like can this experiment be replicated by what is true through specificity . Yeah. And thats actually again, that was amazing. Yeah. But stuart hall so yeah, definitely the spirit of stuart hall kind of suffuses that we do at each. But if you guys dont know stuart whos stuart hall is Great British cultural scholar and part of the new left and he died of like ten years ago 15 years ago there were no but yeah but that kind of material about lived experience is part of why we, we have all these first person essays and poems like that so. Um, you in your piece, bailey, you, you inspired by taxi drivers struggle. I kept coming back night after night. Then week after week. I listen to their stories through their portraits, marched in their picket lines, and ultimately join their Hunger Strike and this was a 94 group it group of immigrant workers. What did they feel about being drawn and what do you get by drawing inequity rather just writing about it . Oh, the guys loved it. There is this one organizer at the new York Taxi Workers Alliance, mohammed tipu sultan, who was such an amazing performer of protest, like he would get on the back of a taxi wearing his keffiyeh, you know, leading a chant like like and people like and they love to be drawn love to have that image, you know, captured, captured of them, you know, looking like heroes, which is a way that working class people dont often get to be portrayed. Now now, what was the second part of the question . I was i was so blown away by tebow. What can you get up by drawing these kind of portraits . Drawing, drawing, inequality rather than just writing about it . This is this gets us back to like the german romantics. Like what is like what could suffer suffering or power. Its just life, right . Like ive ive always just been attracted to drawing all of life, not just inequality not just, you know, people on strike, but also really hot burlesque girls that couldnt touch their heads with their feet feet. Its true. Thats where roots as an artist come from. I mean, for me, in some ways, i dont even think about like, what am i doing thats like special . More so is like this is the language by which i communicate with the world like ive been drawing since i was four. I die with a pen in my hand and. That is just how i see things. However, i will say that what drawing does is a relationship thats much more than photography. Often is because its something where the person has to sit for you right at something where they can look at what youre doing and they can say youre doing it wrong and they can say that that doesnt look like their buddy, that that nose is messed up and theres an expression, right, like you a photo. But you make a drawing. I think that says something about the of it now as to what pictures can do that cant you know a lot of obvious things have been said about this and a lot of a lot of things you already know. I think that the number one thing that they can do is that, you know, you have to sit down and read an article whereas an image just gets to you. You dont need to speak the same language as the person who drew it. You dont need to, you know, take the time that you would read. It just goes straight into your brain, right . Trying to you. And i asra, i wanted to ask you because i feel like so the whole eater thing, i mean, i feel like without occupy, it wouldnt have existed like that to me our organization. A lot of it, the seeds of it were started with occupy. I mean, the started in 2012. So it was literally like your life later. So i want to know how like books like Barbara Ehrenreich sphere falling and also your op as there was very active occupy how your participation that has had sort of filtered through the last 12 years or so like how how has that changed you. Yeah. Oh this one. Yeah. Well i think precisely because of that opening it created where there could be a more honest conversation class and inequality and the failings of the american political system. I mean, when youre describing mollys piece, one thing you said is she joined the Hunger Strike. Molly took a side. And so one thing pete does. Right. Is it it also reminds us that most of the media we read is is taking a side . You know, it assumes the subjectivity of the wealthy of of the middle. Right. And treats poor people as an aberration kind of others them and you know speaking for myself and maybe molly feels this way as well. But, you know, of the power of occupy was that there were a lot of people going to Zuccotti Park in manhattan. And this was happening in encampments the country and we were saying, we think things are you. It was a gathering of people who felt that the economy wasnt working. And what we in that moment we started taking a side and so our in our writing right were like no we were not just neutral where we are committed to a certain point of view. And part of that is, you know, naming the injustice that is built in to the way our economy is structured, i certainly would not i dont think been ready to see things that way if it wasnt for the work of people like Barbara Ehrenreich, who is just a huge influence on me. I mean, i cannot overstate it. Obviously, shes known for many books she wrote about a lot of things, but fear of falling was a book that i just read over and over. And its about the psychic life of the middle class, actually. Precisely shes shes doing the kind of myth busting that i think were still still doing, which is to say, you know, in the united states, nobodys nobody ever feels economy actually secure because we live in a society where we are where we lack a social safety net that is robust enough to catch us. And so even if you have a lot compared to others, you youre still afraid of falling. That fear is still sort of hounding you. I mean, shes just a Brilliant Writer who certainly shifted my perspective things. And i think, you know i as alissa mentioned, i organize around debt. I cofounded something called the debt collective, which is the worlds first union of debtors. Weve been fighting for student debt relief, among other things. So very impressed with the taxi drivers victory and how they won debt relief. And i think that that that work of actually organizing is really important. But, you know, somebody like also reminds me how much how important it is to keep working at the level of narrative and ideas in journalism too and in constantly pushing against those stories that were being told and reminding folks that there are all sorts of other voices, all sorts of other all sorts of other stories that need to get out there as well. Thank you. It was great. And yeah, so i had a few more questions for you and then im going to open it up. But selena, you actually had an experience of living. Living migration as a child and how how do you feel like that sort of affected your work generally . I have to think about this. Well one thing that its helped me to think about is a little bit regarding what astrid was just talking about, of the importance of narratives and thinking about what are subjectivities or the narrative of the roles we think we have to play. Where like us, whether we originally identify as such or not, that we have to. So for instance and i guess the experi ence of immigration has made me always think about limited all spaces in between possession means of neither inside or nor outsider and, the importance of trying to find it, find a place to belong without being pigeonholed and so theres a lot of contrast actions in there, both not wanting to be hyper visible nor invisible, wanting to be recognized, but not and and then especially these days regarding my my work these days, thinking about different sorts of solidarities and politics and different forms, especially during and after the pandemic, i think that a lot of folks came back to mutual aid like whether by nothing networks or community fridges, etc. , and and we realized like, oh, its not just a cute exercise, guys, but at first it feels like charity. We dont want it becoming poor people, helping the poor and letting the state abdicate responsibility. So what else is happening here so that it doesnt become that and so i realized so i think for me, my immigration experience made me think about politics, but not in the usual way that we usually see it being talked about in mainstream media. Its not, which is why im not into voting i feel so odd in our Political Department because im not thinking about the median voter in congress and and perhaps for good reason. So Many Americans are disenchanted. Theres some pretty famous studies out there. One of them showed that out of 1800 or so congressional decision ins, the chances that the average citizen send me a had their preference is reflected in those 1800 decisions was nearly zero. They they compared congressional decisions with Public Opinion polls about each of those policy issues. And so its like me grab, i think immigration made me specially attuned but without necessarily the vocabulary or tools until fairly recently to think about what does my sort of politics look like and is it protest is a mutual aid . Is it what does it look like . Yeah, you know, its interesting about selenas work. She also does stuff and its called budget justice. So its participatory. Anyone here participated that way. And their local, local government cool. And so thats her academic interests. And whats interesting to me is how those concerns filter into your poetry as well and how everyone here actually is interested in this sort of shadow, non, non governmental as well as well as governmental kind of classical political change. But to try to have these kind of organize change on the margins and out outskirts and then the limits to liminal spaces. So before we open it out, theres one last question i want to ask, which is quickly, what is giving people hope or any any kind of sense of positive feeling, given trumps high numbers is and israelgaza, etc. , etc. Is. Do you want to start molly. I mean, its okay. Yeah. Given the ongoing genocide in gaza, trumps high numbers, i dont actually have a great amount of hope at the sort of macro level, everything is trash and we do what what we can to fight that. But what does give me hope is new york city. I am born in the city. Im a new york patriot, if not in american one. And the thing that covid spending that here gave me was the sense that the city and its people would take care of each other in spite of everything. And it filled me with this like love for this place that stretches even over the most like humble and stupid things about it. Like, i kind of fell in love with everyone who stayed, even the people i usually hate and even them and i think the the continuing existence of new york of the old tenements of the the abuelita is playing dominoes outside of the Community Gardens of even the rats, right . Of all of it. Of the city is what gives me hope beautifully. What about what about you, alex . Uh hmm. You know, i get. I get hope when billionaires start losing their money. That makes me happy. Zo, i got to tell you, as awesome. Uh, i get hope when writers and unions start getting their desires met there. Once met, i get hope. Theres more inclusion in movies and on tv. Thats always a good thing. I, i kind of, you know, despite. New york city politics, like you said, molly, i do find some hope because there are people who are out there who are good, who are actually doing to make new york better. Its, you know, through through writing, through process, through crowdfunding and that gives me hope because i know there were a lot of years when i didnt find a whole lot of hope in anything. The recession may and i was just like, im just going to im just going to move to like. The beach beach in and start my own little community. Um, well, yeah, there are pockets hope that i see all throughout the country and throughout the world that we can be happy to be a human. Its its. Its not a bad time now for us. Not a bad time. Um, i think things are hard. I think i agree with, with that and i guess what gives me hope is if not hope, drive and soccer is seeing so many people. The seduction of despair and and how people i admire keep going even when things are hard and i was talking to someone named makani temba whos working in jackson, mississippi on Democratic Initiative there. And um, she and im going to just read one thing that i really liked by about what she said. She said, i always believe were just a nanosecond away from freedom. Everybody could look up and be like, it, im tired, were free. Thats that needs to happen. If billion people say that, then were free and its stories like ones in the book that help people to do to come. That realization also. Because i think a lot of people are tired and rightfully so. But there is power in recognize this and recognizing that its because of the larger structures wherein and not us. Yeah, i feel that. I see you. I feel that astra any final thoughts . Final thoughts on hope . I mean, its easy to have hope when things are going good. You know, i think hope is other people hope, collective action. You know, i see hope in every protest that is happening. I feel hope at every debt collective new Member Meeting my new people join our organization. You know i really resonate with the wise words. The prison abolitionist and writer miriam kaba, who says hope is a discipline. And i think that thats true. You know, hope is something that we actually have to work to cultivate. And we cultivate it through collective action and through community and yeah, i mean, also theres the rebecca great Rebecca Solnit line hope is not a Lottery Ticket that you sit in clutch right no its something thats thats militant and and powerful and so we can make it but we have to do that together. You. Yeah lets. So i think i think with that kind of profound list poem of of hope, hope and hopelessness, we should open this up to the audience to any questions from the audience. Thats the great present. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Youre definitely able to project zach. Yeah, sure. You. Sarah just across across youre going to get more justice systems and or a larger is there a society look at more just for small. Intimate as often yeah as we see now from the rise of the right in scandinavia that only pertains if youre your White Scandinavian society. So is there is there a society. And that there are i im im not a political scientist. Im an artist who draws burlesque girls. But. I you know, i dont think that like we we can find like utopia or the Perfect Society on this earth. I think that we can only find moments when some things have worked better in some aspects, right and havent and have, you know, perhaps not worked in other aspects. Like what you were talking about scandinavia my own politics are always towards towards democratic socialism, towards you know people being taken care of, towards there being, you know, more freedom, towards there being more time to live and not just slave at work, but i, to be honest also most of the reading and most of the studying that i do tends to be bad places instead of good. And so thats left me with a limited vocabulary of good societies. So to answer your question with. Yes. Hi, whats your name . Emily nagasaki. Steve, thank you so much for this kind of wondering because its so directly related to topics that the project covers. If you can talk about any theme that you see parallels in Reproductive Justice Movement and the warning and what you shared about legislating decision making, not matching the Public Perception around abortion access. And then they also look at examples like ohio recently and like creativity about about justice. And i just wonder if there are metaphors for cautionary that you might. I mean, im thinking of like the anti network and so the anti network is a sort of a kind of a reddit group of women who were providing, i think, plan b to women in the early days after after. Dobbs and there was a of kind of a decent a abortion mutual aid work or, again, plan b that were being provided. Theres also that group that takes people across state lines. Now, im forgetting it right now, but theres a lot, you know, and again this is this is something in my last book, bootstrapped, i call the dystopian social safety net things that we shouldnt to exist but dont do so. Thats part of the positive. But its also problematic because why should this all have to rest on on the backs of women who are mostly women who are volunteering to help other women. Right. But then, yeah, you see ohio. See kansas. This is this is part of that like the hope side of the access me at least anyway, i dont know. Do other people have other thoughts . I mean, one thing thats i think is really amazing with reproductive justice is, the international dimension. So you have groups like leslie, liberals in mexico, you know, who successfully fought and won, you know, the right to abortion in their now who are training people to not just like give people abortion but also accompany them through like the very painful process of doing like a medical. And i think that that International Solidarity is is so amazing. I will say one more International Example and i dont mean to romance to size these sorts of assemblies, but theres a, there was a Citizens Assembly in ireland where they it was part of the constitution that the vow that the fetus should be prioritized over the mother in most situations. And you have a catholic country where divorce wasnt legal until especially no fault divorce until fairly recently, etc. And then you have these assemblies in which people could grapple with complexity and not just fall to partizan lines and really think about. Gray situations and propose the language for a constitution referendum that got ireland the right to abortion and if they can do that there and dont think that thats the solution for everything, but that combined with different sorts initiatives like the one that elissa was talking about, where people sort of like occupy, they take spaces, use the services they provide them, and at the same time they demand that the state also give its power and backing to it. So we cant keep waiting. But theres also different ways of speaking together, even when and trying to do something, even when the state has not yet back this up. Yeah and theres also in the book theres a few pieces around reproductive rights and and poverty and inequality and i actually have a poem in the where i based on a lot of different clinics including the clinic at the of jobs that i reported in. And like first person accounts of people getting abortions. And i think a lot of the openness people are now showing around having had. Im finding that i mean, thats a part this this kind of imaginary spaces that people are taking the freedom of the mind where freedom of self selfhood, where people are now, you know, coming out as having had abortions. I do find that hopeful is where. So i think i could only do one more get back. Im sure that we can hear your voice is good and. Yeah, yeah sure. Yeah. I just want to share a little of my story. Oh, yeah. Okay yeah. Interesting that maybe, maybe, and hopefully this will give you a little bit of glimmer of hope. My family is from migrated here from the dominican republic, mother and father and. Yeah. Okay, thank you so much. So i was born and raised in in the bronx, very, very tough eighties, nineties. My mom wanted to send us to catholic. We couldnt afford it. And there was an anonymous donation that was sent to cardinal his high school in the bronx. I for four years to that school. My senior year i wanted to say thank you to whoever was the anonymous donation that was sent to that school. It was a jewish family. I met the jewish family and they actually sent me to college as well. Well, so theres a glimmer of hope. And what am i doing to pay it back . I raised money from Family Offices to build affordable housing, work done for single mothers in augusta, georgia. We built we build Charter Schools with mike tyson in florida and so i believe that a solution based approach is better than screw everyone, burn the system and saying everyone is everyone is not bad and a family that a jewish family in donating anonymously to a Catholic School and sending this kid of dominican parents to a school. And then how did that pay for . How did that work forward for for my brothers and sisters is that i learned of various different programs at Hofstra University where they paid for my entire that sent my my brothers and sisters my brother and sister tasha university that one blessing and then five other kids went on to attend Cardinal Hayes high school because im paying it forward. That one blessing and this is a wealthy family they could have said were not giving anything, anyone. So need to work together. Theres theres better is better in solutions than everyone fighting each other and saying you know what lets reinvigorate the workforce instead of saying you need to quit your job to start your own your own company, why not invest into those workforce geniuses that capital that they can Start Companies or utilize the Pension Funds so that people can move into their. Theres so many solutions. I came from a poor background thats why im sharing this. Thank you. All right, everybody. So i think were going to have to wrap it up. Thank you again for that. And asking all the questions and coming out tonight. Its a very cold night. Were going to be signing a please by going book. Check out the Economic Hardship at icon hardship is our twitter and at Economic Hardship is our instagram. Donate submit pieces if you are yourself struggling with income inequality in some way or other or or or a journalist who wants to cover something. I think its information info add Economic Hardship if you have dot org if you have pictures. So thank you again and thanks for coming tonight